Inmune
by Hounsou
Summary: Life deserves just a talk


Rueben sat on the roof, his mind whirling. He shivered. A cold wind blew off the Hudson this evening but that wasn't what was making him shiver...

Knock knock. It was Kerouac.

"Go away."

He was holding a lawn chair, "I saw a vampire nosing around the neighbourhood. So I turned him into this lawn chair and I decided to come up, and lounge around, and look at the stars..."

"Sam."

"And help you stop brooding."

"Go away."

"Also... I brought beer."

"... Well... O.K... But I don't feel like talking."

"Fair enough."

Sam had brought up his battered red Igloo cooler. To Rueben's simultaneous delight and annoyance, it was stocked with ice cold Asahi and couple of turkey sandwiches. His favourites. Even though Reuben was a life adept, his stomach growled.

"Sandwich?"

"Sure, bottle opener?"

"Please"  
After a few moments of wrestling with the lawn chair, Kerouac had finally made himself comfortable and sat back taking in the city and the sky. He was infuriatingly relaxed. Neither of them spoke for twenty minutes.

"Naya is worried."

"I know."

"She thinks that you are mad at her. Are you?"

Rueben sat up in very real surprise. " No. I mean, I accepted what she does a long time ago. I knew what she would do...It's just that ...I nearly dropped the ball. I almost lost her today."

"She'd tell you that it was meant to be then. That her work here had been fulfilled."

"Fatalism."

"It's what she believes"

"Do you?"

Kerouac laughed a short barking laugh. "My only claim to wisdom is that I don't know what I believe." He took a long pull on his beer. They sat in silence some more.

"What was that thing?"

Kerouac shifted, looked thoughtfull. "Well... Unless I miss my guess, those cultists were trying to raise up an avatar of Y'Golonac."

"Who's that?"

"A Great Old One. But thankfully, not a particularly Great Old One. You would probably known of them as Outsider Things or Dwellers of the Fringe."

"Jesus."

"Surely you knew about them."

"I was a progenitor for chrissake. I worked in a lab, I never saw anything like that."

"But you knew about them, right?"

"Well sure, but it's not the same thing. I know Belgium exists but I've never seen it. And it's certainly never tried to rip my head off."

"Well, I could argue that Belgium doesn't really exist, mainly because I've been there. But I take your point."

"It... It was horrible."

"Yup... Want another."

"Yeah." Sam passed him an opened bottle. "So... you know more about this stuff than I do. Care to enlighten me?"

"Sure, what do you want to know?"

"Well I guess my main question is... what keeps them from eating us all alive?"

"Some would say the Gauntlet."

"But you wouldn't."

"No. As with most things technocratic, that answer isn't particularly... umm... Holistic."

" Should I be offended?"

"No. Many young Dreamspeakers will rail against the vast unfairness of the Gauntlet. Whereas, older ones like myself, understand it's place in the grand scheme of things. Doesn't make it more comforting, but we do understand it."

"But you said that the gauntlet doesn't keep them out."

"Well, yes and no." He said warming to the topic. " Did the Gauntlet always exist?"

"No. Not so far as I know. The Conventions created it."

"Actually that's not true, the Conventions merely altered and strengthened an existing phenomena. But the Gauntlet didn't always exist in the form it is now. The Outsiders have dwelt outside for millennia, like a hungry panther leaning against a screen door."

"So what kept them out?"

"Gaia has an immune system."

"What?"

"Actually, the triat has it's own immune system. The Wyld creates life and gives it a drive to live and a mechanism to fight infections, The Wyrm originally was meant to act as a balancing factor to control unchecked growth, and the Weaver has an immune system that protects it's ordered forms. Have you ever noticed that cities rarely crumble into nothing? Have you ever noticed that logical systems grow and mutate to environmental factors? Have you ever noticed that once someone thinks something that it is really hard to un-think it?"

"So you're saying that the universe is one big organism, and that the triat is it's regulatory system?"

"Sorta."

"And Gaia is an organism too. Like a bacteria?"

"Well, No. At least I hope not. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that each of those planets and stars out there represents an organism and that the universe is an ecosystem of some sort."

"Hmmm." Rueben scratched his head. "So... Gaia is an organism and it has it's own immune system. How is that different from the Gauntlet. The gauntlet acts as a semi-permiable membrane that keep infections out."

"Yes, but that's not the whole of the immune system. Think Holistic. If you caught a deadly infection every time your skin was pierced you wouldn't survive out of childhood. What about viruses and bacteria that infect through contact or airborne vectors. The gauntlet is just a part of larger integral system."

"O.K....I take your point." Sam had a particular gift for putting things in the language that the listener understood. It was gratifying to watch it at work, and occasionally amusing.

"I'll give you an example." He continued. " Consider the Garou..."

"Do I have to?"

"Shhh... The garou consider themselves to be the immune system of Gaia and in a way they are a part of it."

"They are like phagocytes."

"Hmmm?"

"Those are cells that hunt down and devour infections. Only they aren't exactly discriminate about killing healthy cells around them."

"Well, that's an indelicate but apt analogy."

"What else?"

"The Caerns and Nodes are also a part of it."

"Umm, you lost me there I think."

"Think Holistic. Gaia receives sustenance from the sun yes?"

"Yes."

"And this energy is cycled through the wyld and made into people and things. We call it prime, yes?"

"Right, energy matter work."

"Now, in nearly every kind of reaction like this, there is always waste materials. Biological system are no exceptions. So what cleans Gaia's body of waste and fatigue poisons and other toxins"

"Umm. The regulatory systems? The endocrines? The Circulatory systems? The liver? The Digestive tracts? Help me. I'm shooting in the dark."

"All of them. The nodes and ley lines of this world act as the meridians of the human body. There is a natural renewable cycle to Gaia as any Garou will happily tell you.

It's only when these outlets are blocked as the Technocrats do or tainted as the Nephandi would have it, that you run into the problems we are having today."

"Are you saying that Gaia is sick?"

Sam became very serious. " What I'm saying... is that Gaia has aids."

Rueben's eyes got very big. "What do you mean by that?"

"What I mean is... that the technocracy has blocked enough or destroyed enough of Gaia's immune system that it's started to eat itself. The gauntlet holds like a skin around this world and the cities are like big callouses, The ecology gets worse, the changing breeds fight amongst themselves, There are climate changes and the weirdest weather in decades. Don't even get me started on all the polutants in the drinking water and preservatives in the food. We may not have insanity from lead poisoning from the lead pipes like the Romans did, but we have arsenides, heavy metals and fluoride in all the tap water. You know some of this and its long term effect."

"I know that a lot of foods have unnecessary preservatives, and that a number of maladies that people are suffering from nowadays are the direct result of extending the human lifespan. I know that the frogs are dying off... But are these really signs of the end times?"

Sam thought for a long time. "Maybe. I don't know... All I know is that Gaia has a fever and is thrashing in her sleep."

"And it's up to us to treat the symptoms, until her immune system can recover."

"No... That's not enough. We've got to kill the diseases ourselves. The immune system is eating itself. For instance it used to be that their were spirits that regulated the ebb and flow of prime and reality. Do you know what we call them now?"

"No."

"Paradox spirits."

"Get out of town!"

"I'm entirely serious. When a mage does something big, Gaia reacts, either the mage feels a measure of her pain or her delirium and if this doesn't work. the Spirits come out and encyst the offending mage in a paradox realm. This is why paradox spirits will always attack nephandi first and marauders second and the rest of us last. Nephandi are particularly virulent cancers and open up the body to more external infection, Marauders are a form of runaway unstable cell growth that eventually will endanger the organism. Gaia can't actually touch them so she has to shunt them out of this reality. That's the only reason why this planet isn't one big marauder playground. Only the one who can work like us can stay here. even if it's only temporary."

"I get it. So the reason why we have to build horizon realms and do major workings in the umbra is in order to preserve the organisms equilibrium."

"Exactly so. I'll make a Dreamspeaker of you yet. Horizon realms are a lot like tattoos. Part of the organism, and yet, not really part of the organism. Part of the skin...sort of."

"Shit."

They sat facing one another. Rueben's face got angrier and angrier.

"I'm sorry."

"I don't blame you. You left, remember."

"Someone should do something... I should do something." He rose unsteadily to his feet.

"Whoa. Slow down there cowboy. Attempting to save the world on a beer buzz is not one of your better plans."

"Well then what do you suggest I do?" Rueben demanded angrily.

"Only what you can." Sam caught and held his gaze. "Some of these problems are centuries if not millennia old and they aren't going away tonight. All we can do is what we can... and every once in a while, stop and look and remember what it is we are fighting for. See that sky. See that water. See this city."

"Cherish it... it may not be here tomorrow. We may see signs of doom but that doesn't mean we have to get depressed about it or stop trying to do something about it, either. Lighten up Rueben. Hell. We stopped a major influenza today." Rueben sat down again and looked out at the Hudson. He could see barges... it cheered him obscurely.

"Are you going to eat your turkey sandwich or not?"

"O.K. Sam... But I don't feel like talking."

"Fair enough." 


End file.
